Instead, Meta argued, the available evidence is “roundly indicative” that the flagged adult content was being torrented for “private personal use” — as the small amount tied to Meta IP addresses and employees represented only “several dozen titles per year, intermittently acquired one file at a time.”
“The much more plausible inference to be drawn from such meager, uncoordinated activity is that disparate individuals downloaded adult videos for personal use,” Meta's filing said.
For example, unlike lawsuits filed by book authors whose works are part of a massive data set used to train AI, activity on Meta's corporate IP addresses was only about 22 downloads per year. That doesn't come close to the “concerted effort to collect the massive data sets that plaintiffs say are necessary for effective AI training,” Meta argued.
Furthermore, that alleged activity cannot even be reliably linked to a Meta employee, Meta argued.
Strike 3 “does not identify any of the individuals who allegedly used these Meta IP addresses, claim that they were employed by Meta or played a role in AI training at Meta, or specify whether (and what) allegedly downloaded content was used to train a particular Meta model,” Meta wrote.
Meanwhile, “tens of thousands of employees,” as well as “countless contractors, visitors and third parties, access the internet at Meta every day,” Meta argued. So while it is “possible that one or more Meta employees” downloaded Strike 3 content over the past seven years, “it is equally possible” that a “guest, or freeloader” or “contractor, or vendor, or repairman – or some combination of such individuals – was responsible for that activity,” Meta suggested.
Other alleged activity included a claim that a Meta contractor was instructed to download adult content at his father's home, but those downloads also “are clearly indicative of personal consumption,” Meta argued. That contractor worked as an “automation engineer,” Meta noted, with no clear basis given for why he was expected to collect AI training data in that role. “There are no facts that suggest that 'Meta is linked to those downloads,'” Meta claimed.
